Donald Wolfit

His touring company performed in London during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and Wolfit staged a very successful series of abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays in London during World War II in the early afternoon for lunchtime audiences but he was unpopular with American critics when he took the company to Broadway in 1947. He worked a good deal for the BBC playing King John and Volpone on television and Lear Falstaff and Richard III for radio - as well as less predictable parts like Archie Rice in The Entertainer. Wolfit finally made a name for himself at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1936 as Hamlet and he tried to persuade the management to finance him on a tour of the provinces.